$4 Million Verdict Returned in Colorado Jail Suicide Case
A jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado returned a verdict on April 9, 2025, awarding $4 million to the Estate of Jackson Maes, a detainee whose cries for help allegedly went largely ignored by staffers at the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) before he killed himself in a holding cell.
To be fair, deputies attempted to call mental health professionals after the 27-year-old was placed in the cell and began banging his head against the wall, threatening to kill himself. But that was the extent of their efforts. No one answered their call, and they made no other attempt to help him, according to the suit filed by Maes’ mother, Sarah Lieberenz.
Maes was arrested in November 2019, after a bartender called 911 to report how drunk he had gotten, and deputies responding to the bar discovered that he had failed to appear for a traffic violation. He was taken to the SCSO holding cell. After the last guard to check on him left his cell at 10:08 p.m. that night, surveillance video revealed that Maes fashioned a noose from a privacy curtain and fatally hanged himself from the cell bars just 13 minutes later. Meanwhile, according to the complaint later filed on Maes’ behalf, staffers gathered and socialized in a nearby dispatch room. No one found his body until the next day, though two guards recorded cell checks that were apparently never made.
With the aid of attorney J. Spencer Bryan of Bryan & Terrill in Englewood, along with attorneys Sean M. Dormer, K.C. Harpring and Erik D. Moya of Dormer Harpring in Denver, Lieberenz filed suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the lack of suicide prevention measures in the holding cell created a risk of harm to which County officials were deliberately indifferent, in violation of Maes’ Fourteenth Amendment rights. She also sought to extend liability to County Sheriff Dan Warwick for his apparent failure to train and supervise deputies tasked with guarding the holding cell, three of whom were accused by name of deliberate indifference to Maes’ risk of harm by ignoring his suicidal ideations.
Two of those accused of failing to guard Maes were dismissed before the case proceeded to a jury trial on March 31, 2025. When it concluded seven days later, a third guard, Miguel Macias, was found not guilty of violating Maes’ civil rights. But supervising Dep. Kenneth Wilson was found guilty, and Sheriff Warwick was also found liable for failing to train his staff, leading to the large award for Plaintiff.
Macias subsequently was awarded $15,409.82 in legal costs from Liberenz on July 30, 2025. But she was awarded $77,068.29 in legal costs from Wilson and Warwick on September 9. Her motion remains pending for attorney’s fees, which Dormer estimated for the Denver Post at nearly $3 million. PLN will update the final fees when they are awarded. See: Lieberenz v. Saguache Cty., USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:21-cv-00628.
Additional source: Denver Post
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Related legal case
Lieberenz v. Saguache Cty
| Year | 2022 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:21-cv-00628 |
| Level | District Court |